A lot of headlines say inflation is coming down, but for many households it doesn’t feel that way at all. Even if the rate of inflation slows, prices don’t actually go back down — they lock in at higher levels. Rent, insurance, groceries, utilities, healthcare, and property taxes are all still materially higher than just a few years ago.
What’s frustrating is that wages haven’t kept pace for most workers, especially once you factor in taxes and benefit costs. A 3–4% raise doesn’t help much when essentials jumped 20–40% over a short period. Meanwhile, asset owners benefited from inflated home values and equity prices, while renters and first-time buyers are effectively priced out.
It also feels like the inflation story has shifted from goods to “everything you can’t avoid.” Food portions are smaller, insurance premiums are exploding, and services quietly tack on fees instead of raising sticker prices. Official CPI numbers may show improvement, but lived inflation tells a different story.
So the real question isn’t just whether inflation is falling — it’s whether the economy has structurally adjusted in a way that permanently lowered purchasing power for the middle and working class. Are we normalizing a lower standard of living, or is there a path back to real affordability?
Inflation Isn’t “Cooling” for Most People
byu/Raw_Rain ineconomy
Posted by Raw_Rain
6 Comments
The Fed doesn’t target negative inflation/disinflation. They target 2% inflation. We are at 2.7%. Prices will not go down, they will just go up more slowly.
Wages are outpacing inflation though:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that real average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees rose 1.1% from November 2024 to November 2025. This reflects nominal wage growth of about 3.9% outpacing CPI inflation of 2.7% over the same period.
How many threads do we need to have that are just essays about how OP doesn’t know the difference between inflation going down and deflation?
The truth is the dollar is dying.
You can no longer over consume anymore.
The water is rising slower than earlier but still faster than salaries.
But please, on behalf of future trillionaires, don’t organize. Keep fighting your neighbors.
That’s why you invest and take the education ladder.
Everyone experiences it differently depending where they are in the income distribution,.if you spend a lot of your salary in groceries every little increase mean a lot more for your discretionary income, so it makes life a lot harder. That’s the disconnect.